161. Liberty to Captives
Isaiah 61:1c The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me…to proclaim liberty to the captives.
The Lord God anointed the Son with the Spirit so that He would proclaim liberty to the captives. The promise is: “You are free!” But that liberty must be proclaimed and then believed by the captives. The promise is true and the proclamation is genuine, but to be effective it must be believed, received, and acted upon. Repentance and faith activate the promise, and the Holy Spirit works both in us through the Gospel proclamation.
To make it real we must believe two truths: 1) I am a captive; 2) Jesus sets me free. Human beings do not want to admit that they are captive, that they are enslaved to sin and kidnapped by the devil. Jesus told the Jews that if they believed in Him they would be set free. But they resisted that message, claiming that they have never been slaves to anyone. We, too, cannot enjoy the freedom for which the truth sets us free until we confess that we are captive to Sin. We cannot stop sinning and we don’t even want to: we are not free to stop the sin and obey the Law. Like the Jews, we usually don’t even see the shackles that chain us down. Every person wants freedom, and every person thinks they are free, except for human laws, human governments, and actual physical slavery. The chains of Sin and Satan are spiritual and invisible, but they are stronger than any physical chains. The Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to convict us of this awful truth: “You are captive.”
The second truth that must be believed along with the first is: “I am free, because Jesus sets me free.” After I admit I am a captive and confess that I cannot free myself, I turn to Jesus and the Good News He proclaims: You are free, you are free indeed. Your sins are forgiven and taken away. The chains have been broken; you are free from enslavement to Sin, from kidnapping by the Devil, and from the tyranny of Death. Your liberty has finally come; you are rescued and delivered. We didn’t see the invisible chains that kept us bound, and we don’t see the broken chains that set us free, but it is true. Jesus earns the liberty and proclaims the truth. The very proclamation of liberty has in it the very power to make it happen.